1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an unexpected demand detection system and an unexpected demand detection program that allow the detection of an unexpected demand for IT (Information Technology) resources that can be increased/decreased in a system composed of the IT resources.
2. Description of Related Art
In a facility such as, for example, an Internet data center (hereinafter, referred to as an IDC), IT resources are operated in each of business systems managed by a plurality of management entities. The IDC takes control of the IT resources including a server, a storage, a network and the like that constitute each of the business systems, and provides circuits for connection to the Internet, maintenance service, management service and the like.
Particularly, an IDC that is capable of increasing/decreasing IT resources allocated to business systems in an on-demand manner according to a demand is referred to as a utility type IDC. In the utility type IDC, it is requested that the IT resources in the plurality of business systems be used efficiently.
Therefore, in the utility type IDC, it is particularly important to forecast a demand for the IT resources accurately so as to improve the use efficiency of the IT resources based on this demand forecasting. As technologies for forecasting future demands based on past usage records, there are many methods such as a method using multiple regression analysis and a method using an autoregressive model such as ARIMA (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average Model). Further, as described in JP 2002-259672 A, for example, as a forecasting method directed to the field of marketing, a method is known in which behavior patterns of users are classified into a plurality of behavior classes.
Management entities of the business systems can manage the business systems in the following manner. That is, for example, based on a forecasted demand for the IT resources, a management policy is generated that is data specifying when and how much the IT resources are to be increased/decreased, and the IT resources are increased/decreased based on the management policy.
By the use of such a management policy, for example, in the case where the number of accesses from users to a Web site provided by a business system is forecasted to increase to a maximum number of 10,000 to 15,000 during a time period between 10:00 and 17:00 on the 12th of October due to the occurrence of an event such as a campaign, it is possible to add an IT resource so as to correspond to the time period of an increase in the access number.